Press were banned at the last minute from today's London School of Economics private equity conference after Canada Pension Plan and Silver Lake "said they might not turn up if press were allowed in" and other firms appear to have followed suit

Tie. Check. Pen. Check. Dictaphone. Check. Strong coffee. Check. As I set off this morning to cover the LSE’s Alternative Asset Conference at London’s Marriott hotel at Grosvenor Square, I looked forward to some open debate and forthright opinions in the day ahead.

On reaching the Marriott and receiving my press pass I undid my coat, took off my scarf, and proceeded into the room where the morning’s first speaker, Alain Carrier, a board member of the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, was talking.

“Who are you with?” asked a young organiser, presumably a student at LSE. “I have a press pass here,” I responded. The organiser looked back at me, wide-eyed, seemingly caught off guard that a reporter had made it into the area at all. It was as though a trade unionist, or Swedish tax official, holding a placard high in the air, had attempted to crash the event.

Suddenly, with Mr. Carrier’s speech already in full flow, I was met with a forearm at collar bone height blocking my entry, a move more likely seen outside the G20 than in W1.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“No press allowed, I’ll show you the revised agenda outside.”

After being quickly ushered out of the room, it transpired from there that the private equity firms set to start off the day’s proceedings CPP and Silver Lake Partners (set to speak at 09:45), had expressly requested at the last minute that members of the press not be allowed into the event.

“It sucks I know,” said an organiser. “We obviously wanted the publicity for the event, but we were told that these speakers might not turn up at all if we allowed the press in.”

I checked the many unused press passes on display (the journalists had either been informed of the ban or were late). They included Reuters, Bloomberg, The Financial Times, PEI Media, Unquote, and The Economist.

I scanned down the list for the remainder of the day’s agenda, to see only four of the day’s 13 planned speeches were marked “press allowed”, with the remainder marked “no press” (in upper case, red print, for extra clarity no doubt).

The few that were happy for press to attend were: Silicon Valley Bank, Dechert, Greenoaks Capital Management, Advent Venture Partners and Intel Capital.

A spokeswoman for the LSE conference said some of the “no press” sections of the event had been expressly requested, while others had simply not specified either way in time for the event. She said she did not know which firms had gone out of their way to ban the press.

A spokesman for BC Partners and Montagu said he had not been contacted regarding the decision to ban the press, KKR said it had not agreed to a press ban, while all other firms were either unavailable for comment in time to respond to this article.

While Private Equity News will survive being turned down for an event, the non-press policy does pose some interesting questions for the industry. What are CPP and Silver Lake (and presumably a few others) afraid of?

In a depressing sort of way, the morning's developments suggest that for all the talk of transparency and accountability among firms in the private equity sector and their trade bodies, the industry still has a long way to go if it is to shrug off allegations of secrecy and lack of disclosure.

Even if these firms are in the minority in their distrust of the private equity media, it probably still means the buyout industry as a whole is many years away from engaging with mainstream publications and even further off from engaging with the general public.

Taking one final glance at the agenda this morning on my way out, I was alerted to the fact that a speech at 11:15 given by Stephen Pagliuca, managing director of Bain Capital, on "The global economy and the road ahead for private equity", was “Chatham House rules” (journalists are allowed to listen, but not report).

“You should stay for that, if only for the fact he co-owns the Boston Celtics (basketball team),” one organiser said.